St. James Street Renovation: May 2006

Brown Thumb

Well, I proved to myself today that I have a brown thumb.

I've been wanting to plant flowers in the front of the house for some time and today I finally attempted it. It looks quite pathetic.

Living Room Medallion

Here's the medallion in the living room. Not quite as interesting as the birds in the dinning room, but still just as pretty.

Labels: living room

Ahhhhh Mud

They are finishing up with the tape and mud and have started to sand.

Labels: hall

Could it be a Pelican?

I posted a question a few weeks ago on Dwell Magazine's forum asking if anyone knew where I could find more information on the meaning behind the bird in the plaster medallion. An expert in ornamental plaster responded and thought it could be a pelican and if it was it could have this significance:

the use of pelicans in Christian iconography is fairly common as it was thought that a mother pelican would tear the flesh from its own breast to feed its hungry chicks. Symbolic of ultimate sacrifice of god's only son.

In medieval Europe, the pelican was thought to be particularly attentive to her young, to the point of providing her own blood when no other food was available. As a result, the pelican became a symbol of the Passion of Jesus and of the Eucharist. It also became a symbol in bestiaries for self-sacrifice, and was used in heraldry ("a pelican in her piety"). This legend may have arisen because the pelican used to suffer from a disease that left a red mark on its chest.[citation needed]. Another version of this is that the Pelican used to kill its young and then resurrect them with its blood, this being analogous to the sacrifice of Jesus

What do you think? does it look like a pelican? A big thank you to the guy over at Hayles and Howe http://www.haylesandhowe.com/

Plaster Medallions

This is the plaster medallion in our dinning room. I've been trying to research the significance of the birds, but haven't been able to find anything. Maybe there isn't any significance.